Zend Framework 2.0 includes a new version of the SimpleCloud API, with the ability to manipulate cloud server instances on Amazon EC2 and on Rackspace; support for Microsoft's Windows Azure and GoGrid infrastructure-as-a-service is planned in a future release. SimpleCloud API is the project name under which Zend is to port PHP apps between various providers' clouds. It was announced by Zend in 2009 and is backed by Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace, Nirvanix and GoGrid.

PHP is one of the staple languages of the web, used by five million developers. Among those programming in PHP are web darlings Zynga as well as Drupal and Facebook.

Zuckerburg's social network actually re-wrote PHP early last year, creating create HipHop to squeeze out more speed from its web pages without bolting on more hardware at the server-farm side. HipHop turned dynamic PHP code into highly optimized but static C++ and compiled it using the GNU C++ compiler, g++.

The emphasis of Zend's PHP thrust appears to be to maintain PHP's ascendancy by freeing devs from needing to manage the deployment of their apps to the cloud or worry about on-going administration. Zend does not appear to be offering - say - its own platform-as-a-service for that'll host your PHP apps and could see Zend going into potential competition against services using PHP.

As such, it seems, there's been some integration between the core Zend elements of its new cloud – the Framework and Server, which is a web application server – and other people's clouds.

Zend said on the phpcloud site: "All applications are housed within a container on the Zend Application Fabric. This container is separate from all other containers and has its own database instance and is easily connected to your IDE."